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Introduction
The management of risks in multi-site, multi-partner (MSMP) new product development concurrent engineering (CE) projects attract interest from both academia and practitioners. In Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), risk management has been indicated as one of the eight main areas to consider ([33] PMI, 1996). Risk management is a process which covers the life cycle of product design, development and delivery (PD3 ). Project planning, organising, managing and controlling phases must cover (PD3 ) in depth where several risks are housed. Most authors emphasise that it is important to understand exactly what is meant by risk before it can be managed. There are numerous definitions of risk which have changed only little over the decade focusing on the likelihood of occurrence and the degree of impact of a negative event adversely affecting any activity ([33] PMI, 1996; [25] Larson and Kusiak, 1996; [17] Jaafary, 2001; [10] Conroy and Soltan, 1998; [12] Craig, 2003; [36] Smith and Merritt, 2002). The definition by [38] Wideman (1986) places risk in the context of project management. He defines project risk as "the chance of certain occurrences adversely affecting project objectives". In other words, the project risk is "an event, which should it occur, would have negative effect on the achievement of a project's objectives". This definition is adopted to identify risks in process in this paper.
Identification of risks are considered by many authors to be the most important element of the complete (PD3 ) process, as once it has been identified it is possible to take action to address it ([38] Wideman, 1986; [11] Cooper and Chapman, 1989; [5], [6] CCTA, 1993, 1994; [7] Chapman and Ward, 1997; [30] Perry and Hayes, 1986; [16] Hertz and Thomas, 1983). Thus, the success of the identification process to a very large degree is dependent on the "complete understanding of the new product design and development in a multi-partner, multi-location CE environment" as discussed in this paper.
The new technologies, computing and communication have become indispensable in every aspect of the design and manufacturing process, leading to structural changes in social and economical dimensions. Internet technology has led to e-manufacturing which boosted tremendously marketing and sales operations of organisations but not operational aspects of manufacturing. Through...